“With its neatly cut lawns and luscious tropical vegetation,” wrote a BBC News reporter in July, Miracle Village, Fla., is an “idyllic rural community” of 200 residents — about half of whom are registered sex offenders, attracted to the settlement near Lake Okeechobee because laws and ordinances elsewhere in Florida harshly restrict where they can live (e.g., not within a half-mile of a school or park). Incumbent residents might have been apprehensive in 2009 when a pastor started the local rehabilitation ministry (one even called it a “nightmare on Elm Street”), but since then, no one could recall a single impropriety involving an offender, and lately, 10 to 20 more applications arrive each week (screened to keep out diagnosed pedophiles and those with a history of drugs or violence).

Can’t possibly be true

Many consumers already distrust food imports from China, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture nonetheless announced recently (and “quietly,” according to NPR) that it would exempt four Chinese companies altogether from USDA inspections of their processed chicken exports. The changes are part of the department’s money-saving streamlining that also cuts back domestic regulation — proposals that have already drawn criticism from the Government Accountability Office, because they would replace many on-site USDA inspectors with employees of the food-processing plants themselves.

Unclear on the concept

In August, the Mother Nature Network website showcased an array of camping gear seemingly designed for the daintiest of those ostensibly “roughing” it. The Blofield outdoor couch inflates in minutes to produce a facsimile of a Las Vegas lounge sofa. The Rolla Roaster’s 42-inch-long steel fork assures elegance (and evenness) in marshmallow-roasting. For fashion-conscious backwoods women, Teva makes high-heeled hiking sandals ($330). The mother of all Swiss army knives, by Wenga, has so many gadgets that it suggests a parody of a Swiss army knife. To be a camper is to sleep in a tent, though, and why not the trailer-mounted Opera tent, including hardwood floors and a wine cooler?

Inexplicable

Is oral sex permitted in Orthodox Judaism? If so, must any lubricant used be kosher (or is kosher required only for substances ingested into the body)? These questions were not answered by California’s Trigg Laboratories, which decided recently to vie for a kosher label for eight lines of Ecstasy lubricant under its Wet label — and, following an inspection by the Rabbinical Council of California, was granted it. Many authorities believe that nonkosher products can be used if, like lipstick, they are “applied” but not ingested.

People different from us

Jian Yang, 33, a media executive in Singapore, told Reuters in September that he was concerned about the diminishing respect the Mattel Corp. is giving Barbie, reducing production in favor of trendier dolls like those modeled after the “Twilight” characters. Yang is apparently protective of his collection of more than 6,000 Barbies that dominate his row house, which he estimates has cost him the equivalent of nearly $400,000 since he took up the obsession at age 13. He said his parents have come to accept his passion but acknowledged that he had a few “ex-girlfriends” who felt “insecure” around his supermodels. Yang also owns about 3,000 non-Barbies, and on his last trip to New York bought 65 more.

Perspective

It is now well-known how America’s wounded warriors are victimized by the huge backlog of unaddressed Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims, with waits of many months or years. Nonetheless, the department is so proud of shrinking the backlog that it has begun to issue bonus checks to bureaucrats who meet the department’s numerical goals in case-reduction (according to data from the Office of Personnel Management reported in the Washington Post in August). However, another Washington Post story, in September, reported that backlog reduction likely resulted merely from quickly approving the easier cases, while the roster of serious or complicated cases continued to grow, along with appeals of decisions too-hastily made by the bonus-clutching department employees.

Undignified deaths

(1) A 40-year-old woman was killed in a near-head-on collision in August in Spring Lake, Fla., while joy-riding on a back road at night on her dirt bike. She was accidentally hit by her husband, who was also joy-riding, in his all-terrain vehicle, and who also died. (2) A 50-year-old man in Berne, N.Y., was killed in August when, driving an all-terrain vehicle, he virtually decapitated himself on nearly invisible wire strung across a road as one of a series of booby traps he had installed to protect his marijuana plants. CV